When was Rome doomed?

[Atraphoenix]

Rome was doomed when Constantine wiped out Roman Paganism (that was rome's original identity) and abolished "Forward policy" with defensive reserve fighting sytem; I am sure you know better than me the Field Reserve Army, and frontier troops, the comitatentes and limitanei things.
also this sytem created strong general cos in german limes and in the limes of Balkan peninsula a general can get more than 4 legions, and historically that resulted in Strong General usurpers who fought with emperor for crown that triggled endless destability....

Technically the roman empire may have died with the Ottomans, as they claimed to be the new roman empire..as did the russian empire aswell.

Ottoman Sultans even claimed themselves as the successor of Roman Empire, although it is another debate, I can say that SPQR was pagan Rome, Byzantines were Christian Rome and who knows maybe Ottomans were Muslim Rome.

I read all of the histories of that 3 Roman or claimed to be ones, They have common standing armies, their geoghrophical epansion nearly same, they all fought endless battles with persians,
and interestingly their standing armies became corrupted and triggered their doom...

P.S. also Pagan romans deified their Emperors, Byzatines accepted many emperors as saint, and also many ottoman sultans were accepted as Avliyah (same discorce as saint in islam) ...

just a speculation you know I do not want to divert the topic.

[Ludens]

I believe the initial stress was stagnation followed by a slight decrease in economic productivity, primarily agricultural, over an extremely long period.

Thanks for the information, cmacq. That is very interesting indeed. Would the initial economic decrease be a consequence of climate change or are there other causes?

[Atraphoenix]

rome became a symbol of power so it is normal for the later states to claim a successor of them.

and I think sembolically Rome is still alive....

[KozaK13]

The romans believed that aslong as the empire was believed in, then there was a roman empire.

Did Moussolini claim to be rebuilding the roman empire at any point? cus i get the suspicion he may have.

Also don't forget Napolean...toga, leafy crown thing, empire, triumphal arches, emperor...

Infact rome may have contined in the guise of:
the "Barbarian" kingdoms, ottoman empire, Holy roman empire(lesser extent obviously), Muscovy, Russian Empire, Napolean's empire, Moussolini's Italy and even the third riech...all aspired to be like the roman empire, perhaps aslong as that ideal lives there will be roman empires.

Romans were not even a distinct ethnic grop, anyone could have been a roman citizen, from the army or being a freed slave.

Perhap rome has yet to fall....aslong as there is the potential to recreate it then it is still there.

Sorry for being abit off topic and maybe completely wrong aswell.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Well it can be argued that the Roman Empire still exists in the form of the Roman Church. This is one institution which has continuity from before the fall of the Empire up to the present day. The administration of the Church is in many ways similar to that of the Empire, especially geographically.

Leaving that aside, however, something which has not been discussed a great deal here yet is the Roman psychology. I had a very specific point when I said that Rome was doomed from the time of Marius. From Marius onwards it ceased to be "For the Glory of Rome" and became "For the Glory of the General". Once you understand that the Emperor was merely the greates General the precarious nature of his position become obvious. The rebellion against Nero answered the question, "What do you do when you have another, better, General?" then when Vespasian's troops declared him Imperator on the Rhine the system was in a dive.

The insistance of Augustus that he was not King, merely high priest, Supreme Commander and People's Champion, meant that the "Emperor", as we understand him today, never existed constitutionally. This led to an instability, particually when more competant and charismatic generals were around.

Various fixes to the system were tried. Nero and Domitian killed all their relatives and rivals; Marcus Auralius tried to great a dynasty, which would have restricted legitimate claims; Diocletian tried old fashioned Roman Virture; Constantine a fusion of three new religions; and Justinian old Roman piety.

They all failed and none of the answers they tried survived them. The closest was Constantine, but the Church became too powerful and eventually excomunicated the Emperor in the East.

[Subotan]

R
Ottoman Sultans even claimed themselves as the successor of Roman Empire, although it is another debate, I can say that SPQR was pagan Rome, Byzantines were Christian Rome and who knows maybe Ottomans were Muslim Rome.
.

This.

[Marcus Ulpius]

Actually, I think the right answer to the title question would be: during the reign of Honorius or shortly afterward. The question "why" is much more difficult.

Even in this thread there was a wide variety of theories starting from climate change to ethnogenesis (i.e. natural deterioration of old civilization that achieved everything it could, the deterioration that was not stopped or slowed down by good leadership at certain critical points of later Roman history).

But there's also a tendency to an unnecessary complication of the question "when" Roman Empire had really fallen. There's only one certain date that we know - 476 AD the year of abduction of the last Roman Emperor. Byzantine Empire could be called a successor to the Roman Empire but only up to the certain point in its history (Byzantian-Arab wars in my opinion), after that there was very little in common between the two. As for others claiming to be Roman heirs, those were just claims made to justify their political ambitions. There was very little in common between the Roman Empire and the HRE, even less between Romans and Russians (btw, I suspect that claim was made to mark Russia as a successor state to declining Byzantine Empire and not to the Roman Empire proper) and Ottomans had nothing in common at all with the Romas or even Byzantians.

[KozaK13]

Byzantine Empire could be called a successor to the Roman Empire but only up to the certain point in its history (Byzantian-Arab wars in my opinion), after that there was very little in common between the two.

What stops the Eastern Roman Empire being roman?

Perhaps the title qestion should be taken as when was the Western Roman Empire doomed.

[antisocialmunky]

When they divided the empire into East and West as the West was dirt poor compared to the East.

[Uticensis]

Rome had no throne, an Emperor is not a king. I cannot stress this enough, constitutionally Rome remained a Republic until the dissolution of the Consulate in the 6th Century. This was the central problem, the Princeps was an apointed Proconsualr magistrate, who used his household staff to run his provinces. This meant that the "State" as you call it had two arms, the Senate and the Palace, except the Palace was just a "Domus", house.

As the Empire progressed the fiction of senatorial control gradually disolved, but that was as much because of general dissolusion as anything else. The Emperor was technically an extra-constitutional personage, and not supposed to be part of the state at all. To put it another way, the Principate was a fiction of a Republic, and like all fictions was very difficult to maintain.

This may be true for the early Empire, but by the reign of Diocletian the Emperor was far more than an "extra-constitutional personage." There was by then a vast corpus of law that upheld the emperor's place as the official and undisputed ruler. Indeed, even by the Severan dynasty, it was accepted that the emperor was the source of all law: Princeps legibus solutus est was a legal principle established by Ulpian. So although the ambiguous nature of the emperor's position caused problems (even up to the Crisis of the Third Century), I don't really think it can be cited as a reason for the Empire's fall.

When they divided the empire into East and West as the West was dirt poor compared to the East.

A lot of people seem to be making comments like this, seemingly stating that the Western Empire fell because it was just poorer and weaker than the East. And its true that there are a number of reasons why the Western Empire fell and the Eastern one lived on. However, I think its a good idea to try to avoid seeing the way history unfolded as inevitable. Yes, the East had a number of advantages, but when the Empire separated for the last time in 395, it was not obvious that the West was not going to be able to stand. The East was exposed to a lot of barbarians from over the Danube (Ostrogoths, Huns, and eventually Avars, Slavs, Bulgars, ect, ect) and much of the lands that made it rich were exposed to attacks by the Persian, whom the Romans saw as the biggest threat to their survival.

Also, to quote Peter Brown, "To contemporaries, the failure of the western emperors in the fifth century was the least predictable crisis the Roman state ever faced. For the emperors were not economic historians: they were soldiers. For them, it was axiomatic that the northern provinces of the Latin world were unsurpassed reservoirs of manpower. Throughout the fourth century, Latin soldiers had dominated the barbarian world, from Trier to Tomi. To the Latin speaking soldiers among whom the emperors were recruited, it was the East, with its swollen cities and unwarlike peasantry, that seemed the weaker part of the empire."

[antisocialmunky]

True, but it was a contributing factor. It didn't help that the Emperors of the Western Empire didn't invest as much in infrastructure to support the empire as they probably ought to have. They also couldn't just bribe away the problems as easily. The Western Empire was also quite exposed to invasion as their border with the invaders was much more extensive. And while the Eastern Empire managed to hold its own with the Persians, the Western Empire could not take back what it had lost. The Persians and Byzantines stalemated each other because they were landed centralized governments with all the pros and cons that go with that title. The Western Empire on the other hand was dealing with masses of unsettled people moving through their land, pillaging, and staying.

At the end of the day though, the barbarians went for the easier and weaker half to take.